


Your Mark on My Skin

by FujinoLover



Series: We're Perfect for Each Other (You're Gonna Figure That Out Someday) [4]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU that's not really AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Self-Harm, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FujinoLover/pseuds/FujinoLover
Summary: Dead soulmates don’t share scars.





	Your Mark on My Skin

For most of her life, Root believed that she had found and then lost her soulmate.

They had hit off pretty well, considering that Hanna kept to herself most of the time and she was the school’s outcast. Hanna had said that she liked being her friends because she was smart and funny. She echoed the remark, even though she was sure their chemistry had a lot to do with the scars they shared.

She might be young and naïve, but she was aware of the persecution of having same-sex soulmate. While she didn’t care if the dumb people would hate her more for the things she had no control of, she didn’t think Hanna would like it. Hanna, who was sweet and nice and still feeling bad for her soulmate about the scrap on her knee, wouldn’t want awkward Samantha as her soulmate. The thought of losing the one and only friend she had had kept her lips sealed.

Not telling Hanna about their connection remained one of the things Root regretted until decades later.

She was having the time of her life, being somewhere tropical surrounded by beautiful women. The Trojan horse she unleashed had caused chaos for the FBI and left herself several millions richer. She intended on pampering herself for a job well-done, and thus her current predicament.

The brunette woman in blue sarong on the other side of the bar had been sneaking glances at her since she entered and wouldn’t seem to mind if she joined her. She made sure to return the appreciative stare with an inviting smile of her own. The bartender stole her attention for a brief moment with her ordered drink. She slid him a crisp bill in return.

She was just going to take a sip of her fruity drink before making her way to the woman when she caught the sight of it. In surprise, the glass had slipped off her grasp and rolled on the bar, leaving a splash of red on its wake. The bartender was quick to clean the mess. He frowned, asking if she was okay in accented English. She nodded, murmuring something about being clumsy while her eyes stuck on the design on her inner arm.

Sitting down on the nearest stool, she forgot everything about the woman she had admired and her initial intention. She was barely aware of the bartender providing a replacement for her drink, but she made sure to tip him again. Her attention was still glued on her arm.

It wasn’t there earlier, when she lathered lotion on herself before leaving her hotel room. It wasn’t huge, but it was obvious enough, which left a mystery on how she hadn’t noticed it sooner. Unlike normal scars where it tends to be paler, it was darker. Inked. Her heart was trying to beat out of her chest as she traced the bold letters above the unmistakable insignia.

_U. S. M. C._

Hanna wasn’t her soulmate, because she was dead and buried under the patio Trent Russell redid two weeks after she disappeared. Dead soulmates don’t share scars. Whoever her soulmate was, they were very much alive, a proud Marine, and probably would hate her for every crimes she had done.

 

* * *

 

For over thirty years, Shaw hadn’t gotten any big scar that wasn’t inflicted on herself. There were light cuts and small scraps, most faded within a year, and she hadn’t paid enough attention to claim that they weren’t her own. At one point during her adulthood, she was convinced that she didn’t have soulmate—if she did, by some miracle, her soulmate would have been so pissed with the marks decorating their bodies. She was better off with not having one.

Her soulmate turned out to be a late bloomer full of surprise.

It was sometime after she joined Harold and John that a new mark showed up. A round, concave scar on the top of her left shoulder. She felt the difference during shower and when she checked on the mirror, it was there. A bullet scar, probably from a .45 caliber round. A smirk was on her lips as she pressed against it. She did have a soulmate and they had been bad lately.

Nothing changed afterward, much to her disappointment. She brushed it off, assuming her soulmate was an amateur and had gotten themselves killed. She proceeded to forget about it, until she couldn’t do so anymore.

It occurred to her that her soulmate wasn’t as dead as she had thought, still kinda bad, and closer than she had ever expected. Out of all the people on this planet, _Root_ might be her soulmate. While she was hot and good with the guns, those were the qualities she admired, the two of them together would be disastrous.

She rolled her eyes at the soulmate business—at the scar on her arm and the cut behind her right ear and the fact that Hersh had gotten to Root and the torture method she knew ISA liked to use to uncooperative source. Of course her soulmate would be the same person who tased and tried to burn her with an iron on their first meeting. She hadn’t expected anything less, but at the same time, she wouldn’t admit anything until she confirmed it herself.

When Root came back towing an innocent Cyrus Wells weeks later, she had to rein in the urge to check on her ear. She remained standing next to John, watching from afar as Root approached Harold on the bench. They followed them in a safe distance while also keeping their eyes on Cyrus.

“ _Oh, did you not hear about my chat with Control?_ ”

Shaw stopped on her track. John followed suit, giving her a questioning stare. She continued to frown.

Farther ahead, Root took a couple of steps ahead from Harold and showed him the back of her right ear. They couldn’t see what it was, but Shaw knew by heart. “ _She’s fun. In an unnecessary stapedectomy kind of way._ ” Even at such morbid topic, Root’s voice remained cheerful. “ _But I do miss music in stereo._ ”

Shaw heard Harold apologized. Root went on about the job The Machine had given her being not easy, but she wasn’t really listening to it anymore. Instead, she stuffed her hands into her coat pockets to stop herself from touching the identical scar on the back of her own ear.

John noted the sudden change. “You okay?”

“Just cold.”

Later that day, after Vigilance gifted her bruises and scrap on her arm and Root had a new bullet wound under her collarbone, she confronted her. Cyrus had just left for his new life and Harold remained on the sideline when she came up to Root, hooking her fingers on the collar or her t-shirt and tugged it away. The wound was already cleaned and dressed in clean gauze.

“Keep ‘em dry.” She checked on her ear next, just to confirm. It was there, all red and swollen and real. Just like hers. “Change the dressings every seventy-two hours.”

Root had a knowing smirk on. “I love it when you play doctor.”

She stared at her, deadpanned. It didn’t lessen the twinkle of adoration hidden underneath the whole lot of teasing in Root’s eyes. She huffed as she let go of her collar and turned on her heel, aware of the way Root was following her with her eyes because it warmed her chest. She hadn’t wanted or needed a soulmate, yet there Root was, being as annoying as ever.

 

* * *

 

After the failed rescue mission in Maple, Root hid in some random hotel room back in the city. The Machine had assigned her a new identity, which she hadn’t resumed. If She wanted her to continue forward, she had to know if Shaw was dead or alive. She was no longer young and naïve and crushing on a dead girl.

With the TV providing white noise in the background, she took out her folding knife. The room was kept dark, but the sharp edge glinted under the low glow. A burn scar, although more painful, shows up in an instant. It would have been a faster way to exchange messages between soulmates in dire time, but considering Shaw’s condition—if that blonde bitch had really shot her on the head—it wasn’t favored. Samaritan didn’t know about their connection and it was better to stay that way, lest it would use the knowledge to torture both of them. Thus the knife.

With the correct force and depth, the scar would show up within three to four weeks, enough time for Shaw to recover and take notice of it. She grasped the knife tighter. She didn’t even want to consider the possibility of Shaw being dead. Turning her left arm around, she placed the tip of the knife on the tender skin nearest to the crook of her elbow. There would be enough skin to write a message, something short and only the two of them understood, just to tell Shaw that she was not giving up on her. Something like _four alarm fire_.

The knife had cut the skin. Blood bubbled on the surface as it parted the flesh underneath and Root hissed through gritted teeth. She was dragging the sloping line of _4_ when the silence in her ear broke.

“ _Stop._ ”

She chuckled, eyes glazed from the pain. She looked up from her arm, but the knife remained. “You have to do better than that,” she said. While The Machine didn’t talk as much as She used to, she knew She was always listening. “I need to know.”

Her answer came when the TV’s news channel flipped into a black screen. One word, _PLEASE_ , was written in white. Then three more came. _THEY WILL SEE_.

It was only then that Root retreated the knife. It was abandoned on the bed cover, on which she was sitting cross-legged on. She was reaching for the tissue on the nightstand to wipe off the blood when the TV turned back to its boring news. She didn’t care, grinning to no one in particular. If they would see, as The Machine had said, it meant that Shaw was alive for the moment. It also meant that She had projected her to still be alive for at least three more weeks.

That was good enough for her.

 

* * *

 

When the same situation was playing on repeat with only slight variation, Shaw had her suspicion of what it really was. Simulations. They were breaking her mind through psychological torture, trying to find out where The Machine was hiding and turning her into their asset in the process. She resisted, but then they gave her the one thing she wanted the most.

“That didn’t suck.”

“Oh, there was plenty of sucking.”

It felt nice, being with Root like that. Even though this Root said and did things that hers wouldn’t. Even though she had unblemished skin. Even though she kept mentioning about tearing Samaritan apart for scarring her beautiful girl and frowning at the scars as though they were flaws, instead of the proof of the connection they shared. She overlooked all of it because she wanted it to last longer.

It only went a little over seven thousand times, but it screwed her up pretty well. Enough to keep herself away from Root and the team after she got back. It was still a simulation, she believed. At any given moment something would tip her off and she would have to blow her head off, just to have it rebooted all over again. She kept touching the back of her ears, like picking on a scab of probable reality.

No scar, no chip.

A scar, Root’s cochlear implant.

She was still a little screwy. Still thinking it was a simulation and still touching her ears and still would kill herself rather than hurting Root. So she was quite taken aback when Root got shot on center mass. That never happened before—that wasn’t supposed to happen. It didn’t make any sense.

“Shaw, are you okay?” John asked, breaking the quiet that had engulfed the car since they left to find Harold. “I can drive you back to the hospital and take Lionel with me.”

She laughed at that. “I can’t do anything there,” she said, and it was the truth. She would be more useful in getting Harold back than waiting in the hospital. “This is just another test.”

Spitzer bullets were unstable once it penetrated living tissue or fluid, causing greater internal damage along its path as it tumbled, but a through-and-through 6.5 round wouldn’t leave big marks behind. She still thought so when John looked at her with an odd, sad frown on his face and shook his head. She couldn’t stop the tear that rolled down her cheek. Her body had always reacted better than her heart.

She still didn’t feel sad or even angry that Root was gone, but there was a stinging pain on her chest. She traced the spot over her hoodie. There would be no scar underneath, yet the pain was real and hurt unlike anything else she had experienced before. She was aching with a scar she wouldn’t bear.


End file.
